Compact Linux board for more power

When we speak about Linux based prototyping boards, the first thing that comes in mind is Raspberry Pi. But as we know, Raspberry Pi isn’t best choice when things come down to performance. 700MHz processor and 512MB of RAM may get very limiting factor in some applications. And this is great, because instead of struggling, you should consider other options. One of them may be ODROID-U2.

It is small sized platform that features a whopping quad core ARM Cortex-A9 processor running at 1.7GHz. There is 2GB of RAM. It plays 1080p video format without problem through HDMI. It features all necessary peripherals including LAN, USB, Audio jack, micro SD. It can run popular Linux like Android or Ubuntu. The only downside of the board is that it lacks IO pins. And price is twice as big as Raspberry Pi.